Megabus Hates Me Back

Or at least they don’t care at all about winning me back as a customer! Just check out their very thoughtful response to the complaint I sent them:

“Dear Karly,

Megabus.com strives to provide you with the best possible service, and when
you feel that it fails to meet your expectations, it is important for us to
know. We apologize that you received service that prompted you to contact
us with a complaint, and we regret any inconvenience or frustration that
your experience has caused you. We can assure you that the appropriate
measures will be taken to avoid a reoccurrence.

Your patronage is important to us, and we hope you will continue to give us
the opportunity to serve you again.

Thank you for using Megabus.com we appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
Megabus Customer Service Specialist”

Touching, right? Of course I didn’t expect anything as radical as a refund, but they didn’t even offer a travel voucher OR spell my name correctly. FAIL.

Dear Megabus,

…I HATE YOU!

Y’all. Y’ALL. Yesterday was the last day of our whirlwind trip to VA. And it. Was. Terrible. And it was all Megabus’s fault.

Let’s start at the beginning: we [Chinatown] bussed to DC on Friday night, staying over with two of our favorite people (and on T(ea)’s favorite mattress on Earth). Saturday morning, we picked up our tricked-out rental car from Hertz (I love you Hertz, and I especially love the dude working at the Lindsay Lexus Hertz counter Saturday morning) and drove to Roanoke (via Charlottesville where I had a lovely lunch with my dear old friend Jen)! That evening we went to the Shadowbox‘s Zombie Prom and had a blast:
The next day was Easter which was sunny and full of familytime. Very nice to hang with my sibs, cousins, and folks:

BUT THEN, yesterday, all hell broke loose. En route to DC, we hit massive amounts of traffic, which almost doubled our travel time. When we realized we were going to miss our Chinatown bus (DAMNIT), we called lil seester to see if she could find other bus tickets online for us. Fortunately (or so we thought) there were seats available on a Megabus that was leaving 1.5 hrs after our scheduled Chinatown bus–just enough time to make it to town, grab a bite, drop off our car, and get on the bus.

Or so we thought.

Turns out that our 7:30pm bus departure was a LIE and we actually left at 8:15pm–moving our midnight arrival in NYC back to a theoretical 12:45am. But that’s not all: not only did the Megabus staff members at Union Station absolutely ignore the huge line of people waiting for the bus to arrive/load/leave, but they ended up sending us out late on a bus that was THERE THE WHOLE TIME. What was the holdup, you ask? We have no idea. Nobody ever even apologized for running late. Once we finally got on the road, there wasn’t exactly smooth sailing–we had to stop the bus after 3 hours to get a new driver and once the driver was replaced, the driving was so slow that we didn’t get back to NYC until 1:15am. And for anyone familiar with NYC public transit at night, that means that we didn’t get home until 3am. THREE. A. M. All because Megabus is terrible.

In conclusion please don’t ever take Megabus ever and if they ask you why you hate them so just tell them that you heard about their horribleness from me.

The Very First Batch of Sea and Tea Truffles!

This weekend Sea embarked on an exciting adventure–making homemade truffles! After weeks of shopping online for candy-making accoutrements, painstaking selecting the chocolate to use (I went with Grenada Chocolate, a worker-owned radical collective on the island of Grenada), and finding a recipe I wanted to use, it was time to begin!

The first part happened yesterday: the creation of a delicious ganache! It was much easier to do than anticipated. First the chocolate had to be chopped but AWAY FROM ANY AND ALL WATER DROPLETS. The recipe was adamant about that. Then I mixed in the boiling heavy cream and whipped it all into a yummy emulsion! Sadly there are no photos of this because my hands were covered in chocolate.

I let the ganache sit for a day and then piped it into dollops (technical term) on a cookie sheet and put them in the fridge to cool/firm. Once they’re cool I’m gonna roll them into lovely balls and let them cool again. And then….the big challenge–creating tempered chocolate and then dipping the centers in it!! YUM. Check back for updates…

 

 

Springtime in Dreamland

PHEW! As always, it’s been much too long since our last update and we feel just terrible about it. Lots lots lots has happened and here’s a quickie update for all y’all who are curious!

• Sea’s little sister was arrested in Richmond (along with 29 others) during a protest of a new regulation forcing women to have medically unnecessary ultrasounds before having an abortion.
• T(ea)’s mom got a brand spanking new hip and can already walk around the house without a cane! Talk about badass.
• Sea applied for a graduate program at VCU and is still waiting to hear if she was accepted (insert nailbiting here).
• Sea and her bestie-since-age-8, Meg, decided to run the Run with Grace 5K in honor of their friend Grace Lovegrove who passed away in 2005. They train 3 days a week and hate every minute of it (except the warmup walking).
• We signed up to bowl for abortion access at the NY Abortion Access Fund’s 3rd Annual Bowl-A-Thon! Please consider donating even a tiny bit ($10 aka 1.5 Starbucks lattes) to our team, Bowl Against the Machine.
• We went on a beautiful and extremely fun long-weekend expedition to Vermont with a fabulous crew of mischief-makers from all over the East Coast (photos below).

On the horizon:

• Lots of great concerts including Simone Felice and First Aid Kit (BOTH shows TONIGHT) and Radiohead in Montreal
• Other fun cultural NYC things like a chocolate-souffle-making class at Dessert Truck Works and our second visit to the epic Sleep No More
• An Easter trip to Roanoke for familytime and of course The Shadowbox’s Zombie Prom
• Further exploration into Sea’s newfound hobby, chocolate-making
• Possible bunny-adopting?
• …and lots more!

Love love love to all and sorry for the lack of updates. We promise to try harder!

xo
Sea and T(ea)

VERMONT!!

Ben and Judy Benjamin’s Sugarhouse

At the end of May, Tea and I were fortunate enough to have a weekend away from the City in his hometown of quaint and adorable Clinton, NY. Getting there, in true Sea and Tea fashion, we rambled and wound our way along…stopping whenever the idea struck us. This means that we bought two cups of lemonade at a little-girl-run stand in South New Berlin (proceeds benefiting the SPCA!), took a short detour through a picturesque yet slightly creepy old graveyard (video here), and (best of all) discovered Ben and Judy’s Sugarhouse.

Ben and Judy Benjamin are retirees who started a Sugarhouse (aka Maple Syrup and other Maple Products creatorium) right next to their regular house in the lovely hills of central NY. When we pulled up (after spotting a NY State Tourism sign with the word “Sugarhouse”, obvs), the place looked closed, but after hopping out of the car to peer inside, we heard a voice from the building next door: “Be right there!”

Within seconds, Ben and Judy had emerged from their home, unlocked their dark sugarhouse just for us, and commenced a personal tour of the space, equipment, and maple treats. We sampled different grades of syrup (photos below!) and even some of their super-special Maple Cream (which actually has no cream in it at all and is only made from maple sap, just like like maple syrup)! They told us all about the process of tapping and how their grown daughters and their families help to run the shop. It was AMAZING.

After our tour, Ben and Judy were kind enough to show us their antique cars as well–a gorgeous Model T and two other ones too! It was all just so lovely and un-rushed and gracious and green…made us really start thinking about leaving this city and doing Our Own Thing…

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED

Dearest readers,

The past couple days/nights have been extremely eventful. Full update coming at the end of the weekend–which we’re spending upstate, you know, to enjoy nature and stuff–but let’s just say that yesterday we saw these guys:

shook hands with this guy:

and picked up some CDs from these fine folks:

TONIGHT, Sea hit up a shmancy event during which this woman:

gave out a bunch of awards to some other amazing women.

And this weekend, we head upstate for some R&R. Details very soon, promise!

Going on Vacation!!

As summer rolls into The City, we can’t help but think about a certain road trip we took way back in 2008–a crazy week of mishaps (car breakdowns, dry counties, and raccoon attacks) that we were certain would drive our then-friendship to its breaking point. But we made it through–with a handful of amazing tales to tell (free limo rides, a trip to the top of the St. Louis Arch, surviving raccoon attacks)–and now we’re going for round 2…with a catch.

Sea and Tea Road Trip 2011 will take place…on the West Coast!!

That’s right: we booked our one-way tickets to San Francisco on Labor Day weekend and will rent a car from there and head up the coast for a week of adventure. Among the places we plan to visit:

…and many more in between! So it’s time for you to chime in. Where should we go? What lovely things should we see? What fun activities are not to be missed? We’ve got four months to plan and need your help so comment away!

We knew the weekend was off to a great start with Thursday night’s Cinco de Awesome (Mayo) celebration in Brooklyn, where there was lots of Sangira:

(YESSSS)

But today was even nicer, with a long, lovely walk in Central Park with some friends. Central Park is, of course, swarming with people these first few nice days of summer, but the Belvedere Castle was still amazing. Plus we spent some quality time in the ramble, going over the “bridgey-thing” (right ML?), looking at turtles, listening to guys play ukelele covers of Jason Mraz songs (video forthcoming), and pondering the logistics of 30 rowboats on a tiny pond. Plus we took a moment to look adorable:

Tomorrow we’re leaving the City at 8am (yikes!) for a super-fun Stream Ecology Hike (nerd alert) upstate. For anyone curious about what that means exactly, click here for the super interesting description! Best of all, I might get to try out the new Paint Can Pinhole Camera  I bought at the Brooklyn Museum First Saturdays Party this evening!! It is so adorable and looks like this (on the left):

Check back tomorrow evening for digital photos and tales of our woodland escapades–hopefully there won’t be any incidents like TickGate 2009–and special Mother’s Day tributes.